[DAVID SOLOMON] It was a huge undertaking.

We had all of these portraits... drawn in Europe, during World War II.

And our goal was to find a home for them; either get them to the veteran or his family.

[KATHY] Some of the people that I've spoken with had no idea these portraits existed.

[DEBBIE MERGENOV] Oh my god, I just cried my eyes out.

I just thought it was beautiful.

[MYER BERNSTEIN] Their first reaction was "Dad, it doesn't look like you."

Well, I was 19 years old!

[RICK DAMON] That's my dad.

That was my best friend.

[DAVID] We had copies of about 100 portraits.

They were drawn by the artist Elizabeth Black.

Well, we didn't have a lot to go on.

We had addresses that were 70 years old.

We sometimes only had a first name to go on.

And our big challenge was finding the one woman drawn by Elizabeth Black.

What were the chances of us finding her still alive after all this time?

[MARY LOU CHAPMAN] Yes, I'm very much alive.

I'm 95.

[DAVID] We got to work... researching... email... social media... writing letters... We hit the road... we went coast to coast... We finally meet at last.

With every intention of finding Elizabeth's Soldiers.

[John Black] It amazes me that she had the stamina to do that many portraits in a day's time.

[DAVID] We first told her story in a documentary in 2013.

She was an artist from Pittsburgh - who joined the American Red Cross Clubmobile Unit during World War II.

Elizabeth spent nearly two years traveling through Europe.

First, she served coffee and donuts, then she started sketching the troops.

- When she did the sketches in the field, she didn't just fly through them, she was very careful to get a good likeness.

[DAVID] Elizabeth did about a thousand portraits in all, and she would send the original portraits back home to worried families in America.

At some point, Elizabeth decided that she needed to keep a record of her work, so she took good quality photographs of these sketches.

- We have probably close to 100 that she kept.

[DAVID] Many of those originals though, never got to the families during the war, or maybe they were lost over time.

But now, getting these copies to people would mean a lot.

[JOE NEMETZ] Been waiting 60, 65 years for this... [JOHN] But my hope is that by getting this story out there... [JOE NEMETZ] "Love, Joe..." [JOHN] We'll find out who some of those people are.

[DAVID] We found the family of the late Joe Nemetz living in suburban Philadelphia.

Frank Clark... [JOHN] Mr. Clark?

[FRANK CLARK] yes?

[DAVID] Still alive and well living in Beaver, Pennsylvania.

[BETTY HOUSTON] My mom framed it right away and hung it on the living room wall.

[DAVID] Some families actually had the original portraits, but they were still glad that we reached out because they'd always wondered, "Who was Elizabeth Black, where did my dad meet her?"

They did not know the story behind the sketch.

[♪♪] We put up the entire gallery up on our website.

And every time we connected with one of these families, we'd mark the portrait "found."

But if we were going to find homes for all of these portraits, we needed some help.

[LISA FROUG-HIRANO] Hey David, Lisa Froug-Hirano, calling from Hawaii... [DAVID] Then we started getting phone calls.

[LISA ON PHONE] I was doing some research on Red Cross clubmobile gals of which my mom was one, and found your site.

[DAVID] These were calls from amateur genealogists, and other researchers.

They were volunteering to help us find these families.

The first person to reach out - all the way from Honolulu - was a woman named Lisa.

And she was interested and dug right in.

[LISA] And on that site, I found Hubert Bell... Richard Hester... and Thomas Rue.

[DAVID] She helped close quite a lot of our cases.

Well, then we started hearing from more researchers.

After Hawaii, we heard from California, then Massachusetts, then Virginia and Michigan... and all of these volunteers helping us find these families.

[KATHY] I think it's the thrill of the hunt... [DAVID] Kathy Kirchner is our volunteer researcher in Michigan.

[KATHY] I looked for the men from Michigan, and in about 20 minutes I found both of them, and I just kept going from there.

I don't discount any possible source of information.

I believe I found him selling used cars in New Jersey...

I have found people in the phone book that are still alive.

Mister Gallagher in Toledo, being one.

My most rewarding find was Johnnie Tanner's daughter.

She was two years old when her father was drafted, and she never saw him again because he was killed.

He never came home.

- We found her living in Illinois, Chris Sendelbach, and she was very pleased to get this portrait.

[KATHY] Very heartwarming because she had never known her father, and this was one of the few things she actually had of him.

[CHELSEA FREY] So unfortunately, I found his obituary on the Internet.

[DAVID] We knew when we first started looking for the guys in these sketches that mostly what we were going to find, were obituaries.

But we were pretty excited to hit the road for Philadelphia... because we'd actually found one of these guys alive and well at the age of 89, Myer Bernstein.

[MYER] Nice to meet you.

[DAVID] Nice to meet you too.

[MYER] I was skinny.

I went into the service, I weighed 137.

[RACHAEL POLLIKOFF] Oh, my god!

- How about that?

[RACHAEL] It still fits.

[ALL TALKING] - Wait, wait, wait.

- That's amazing, Dad.

[DAVID] Oh, his whole family was there... his wife... his daughters... his grandchildren.

- And I just wanted to bring them back to you.

- Oh, my dog tags!

[DAVID] Myer Bernstein had a very clear memory of Elizabeth Black... and he remembered posing for that portrait during World War II.

- Once I saw the picture, everything came back to mind.

- He also told us the story of what he went through right before that.

He had been a medic, and he had seen some of the worst.

[MYER] We constantly moved to stay with the front.

We had gone through a very serious two weeks of, in-taking of a lot of patients in Holland, young men with their legs off.

One of the men that was very ill and was dying and I was attending to him and he jumped up, put his arms around me, and died.

And they actually had to pry his hands off my neck.

And it was a very difficult time.

- Right after that, Myer and the other medics were given a short break... they needed rest, and were sent to a recreation center.

[MYER] The Red Cross volunteers, they would serve you coffee, cigarettes, just make you smile and talk to you.

It was a time that we would relax and our thoughts of home.

And the sketching was done at the recreation center.

It brings back the memory of Elizabeth, very sweet.

Well, she looked like a dream to us.

After all, there were very few women around us.

Took a lot of kibitzing, a lot of, you know, funny remarks, and she took it all in with a smile.

I remember her just being a very charming person and-- but very serious about what she was doing.

[DAVID] It was because we contacted him earlier that Myer went through his belongings... and he found the original envelope sent by the Red Cross in 1945... - This is the envelope that the picture that was sent to my mother came in.

[DAVID] He still had the original portrait Elizabeth had sketched... [MYER] I was 19 years old then, and a couple of years of being in a war changes you a little bit... [SAM MILAKOFSKY] How are you?

[MYER] Great.

[DAVID] And finally he's sharing with his family this little memory - that had been tucked away all those years.

[SAM] Wow... looks just like him.

I see really somebody who's experienced a lot.

That sort of leadership look about him, that uh, you know, he's got the weight on his shoulders, but he can handle it.

[LOIS BERNSTEIN] He's very patriotic, my dad.

His country means everything.

- This is a letter from Harry Truman, thanking us... [SAM] When you talk about that generation, and the first thing that comes to my mind is pride.

[LOIS] Having this picture surface again has meant the world to my parents.

It's just touched my father especially, but my mother as well.

To see my father put the picture up on the wall, and just make him proud, and all of us along with it.

- Well, I see a very young man there.

I think she did an excellent job.

I wish she were around and I could tell her.

- By now, the project was really picking up speed... we were finding families in just about every state.

Some people were seeing these portraits for the first time.

Others had them in their homes for years... but they didn't know anything about the artist or how the sketch came to be.

The documentary and the portrait project were starting to get a lot of media coverage... and then one of the portraits ended up on the front page of the Akron Beacon Journal.

[BOB DYER] I got a tip from a reader who said, you gotta check out this website.

It's really cool.

There's somebody on there from Akron, you might want to pursue that.

So I called WQED in Pittsburgh, and said, do you have any information on this particular person?

[DAVID] Bob Dyer, the reporter in Akron, was calling about Paul Ross... his nickname was Bud.

Well, Mr. Ross was deceased, but we had gotten information about his daughters, from our researcher Kathy, in Michigan.

[KATHY] Bud Ross was actually a pretty easy one.

He did not leave Akron, so that was where I started my search and I was able to very easily find his daughters.

[DEBBIE MERGENOV] My phone rings one day... - And I asked her if her father's name was Bud Ross.

- And I said, yes it was... - You have to be careful... calling somebody out of the blue like that.

- I guess I'm pretty trusting.

No, I didn't think it was a prank.

- Well, she didn't hang up on me.

[ALL IN UNISON] Hi, hi!

[DEBBIE] Come on in!

[DENISE] We're so excited!

[DAVID] And that's how we got to meet all three of Bud Ross's daughters... [DEBBIE] Oh, I see you brought some stuff.

[DAVID] Debbie, Linda and Denise.

[DENISE DOLLINGER] Just the fact that dad is so alive to us again.

I think that's what it is, dad is alive again... and she made him happy.

[DAVID] Elizabeth had sketched Bud Ross at a field camp in Holland.

And his daughters were very moved that his portrait turned up like this.

[DEBBIE] He was 20 years old at the time of this, not married yet.

[DENSIE] Oh, oh my gosh, it's perfection, [DEBBIE] Very much... [DENISE] It really is.

It is him, exactly.

And it's just truly astonishing.

[KEYBOARD KEYS CLACKING] [DAVID] On top of that, a reporter from a major newspaper covered the story.

- The call from you guys just knocked her off her feet.

I went out there about an hour later and she was still dancing on air.

It was very emotional.

It was good news.

People in my business generally don't tell good news.

The story ran on a Sunday.

Above the fold, Sunday is our biggest circulation day, it has the biggest impact.

So it's our most important position of the week.

[DENISE] Debbie had told me that my father's article was going to be in the Beacon on Sunday.

So I couldn't wait.

I hurried, got in the car, I drove across the street to CVS.

And I ran in the door, ran to the counter, where's the newspapers, I grabbed the newspaper.

My dad was on the front page.

I just started to sob, and probably the girl at the counter thought, hmmm... she was a young girl, and I said, this is my father.

- The whole experience was really an opportunity for these sisters to appreciate what their dad did during the war.

[DENISE] And when he got to England, they said, you have a bullet in your leg, and he said, well, I know, I keep telling you I have a bullet in my leg.

[LAUGHTER] [DAVID] Every time a soldier posed for Elizabeth, he would sign her autograph book and there are about a thousand signatures.

Bud Ross is one of them, and his daughters really got a kick out of seeing what he wrote.

[SISTERS IN UNION] Ohhhh!

[DEBBIE] He wrote, thanks a million, PFC Paul V. Ross... [DENISE] And my father always said that, thanks a million.

So when we saw that, we said, oh, my gosh, that's what dad always said, thanks a million.

So he started to say that way back when he was that age.

[LAUGHTER] - Passed away a while ago.

- It would be great if they had the portrait.

- He's still living.

- I thought we found his wife.

[SARAFINA BROOKS] His daughter has the sketch.

[DAVID] So far, out of about 100 portraits, we've connected with more than half of the families.

Usually I'd write a letter explaining how I got the portrait.

And most of the time, the families would respond right away.

Sometimes we were pretty sure we'd found the right family, but for whatever reason, they would not respond.

And some of my letters came back... "return to sender."

- Well, I couldn't find anything out about Murray... What frustrates me, and I don't understand this, is how people can within one generation just disappear and not leave a trace at all.

But after that, he just vanished.

And there have been quite a few of those.

[DAVID] But for every disappointment... [FOG HORN] ...we have success.

Like in San Francisco.

[ATTENDANT] We wish you all a very pleasant day here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

- Down here... We were going to meet the family of George Damon.

Of all the portraits in our gallery, his son was one of the first people we found.

I'm looking for the children of this guy right here.

You could not look at these portraits without saying... boy, was she good.

There's a photograph of George and his wife - and you can see Elizabeth really got a good likeness.

- I see a lot of myself in my dad.

There's uh, everybody said that I look like my father, and my youngest son looks a lot like me.

I see my younger son there.

Over 70 years years old now!

[DAVID] When I first called Rick, he said he didn't know anything about the portrait.

- This really has inspired... [DAVID] But then his sister reminded him that the original might be with their grandmother's things.

These were keepsakes that had been packed away for years.

Well, guess what?

Wow, that's the original.

[RICK] Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, my dad, yes, this is emotional.

Yeah, I see my dad as a young man, and I'm older than he.

I've been doing some research... [DAVID] Every time we meet one of these families... we learn so much more about their family history.

For the Damons, their grandmother had already lost one son in the war.

Roy, his ship had been hit by a torpedo in the South Pacific and at the same time, her other son, George, is fighting in Europe.

[PORTRAIT UNFURLING] And then in the mail comes this portrait of George, a gift from Elizabeth Black.

[RICK] And what she'd done for him, you know, just that little gesture of her drawing his picture, sending it back to my grandmother, you know what that would have meant to her?

It's meant a lot to me, knowing, you know, the story behind it.

- In sharing it with my co-workers, and I work at a school, they said, wow, that's really neat.

They go, oh, your dad was handsome.

But you know, that's just the superficial.

What it means for me is I'm learning about the artist behind the portrait.

[DAVID] When these portraits surface, I think they have a way of kind of reaching through time... and bringing some of these families a little closer.

[RICK] I'm grateful, my sisters are grateful... and feel honored you know that he was one of the lucky ones that was chosen to get her to draw his picture.

[DEBBIE] She was a very selfless woman.

[RICK] And how do you say thank you, how can you put into words, how you feel?

[DAVID] In the collection, there was only one portrait of a woman, and we were determined to find her.

All we had to go on was a nickname - "Lulu" - it was right there on her lapel... but we didn't know her full name.

- My name is Mary Lou Chapman.

[DAVID] ...didn't know where to find her... [MARY LOU CHAPMAN] I live in Berkeley, California.

[DAVID] ...didn't know her history... [MARY LOU CHAPMAN] I was a clubmobiles girl in World War II.

[DAVID] ...didn't realize that she actually knew the artist... [MARY LOU CHAPMAN] One of the women I worked with on the clubmobiles was Elizabeth Black.

[DAVID] By going through the signatures in Elizabeth's autograph book, we took a chance that Lulu might have been a nickname for Mary Louise Weller, from Orskiny, New York... Louise, shortened to Lulu.

Lisa in Hawaii and a Red Cross historian eventually confirmed it.

- So she emailed back and said WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is looking for you.

- What were the chances of us finding her - alive and well?

- Yes, I'm very much alive.

I'm sure you were surprised, because there are not many of us left.

I'm 95.

I play tennis three times a week.

I try to play golf once a week.

I have arthritic joints that hurt.

But I try to play through it.

My head's pretty good.

I play duplicate bridge.

You know, I don't really have any friends my age.

Good game, thank you.

But I have a lot of friends who are younger.

That's nice.

[GAIL UNNO] Everyone in the club is in awe of her.

We can't believe that she's been so active for so long.

- How was tennis?

- Tennis was great.

[BRUCE] I'd rather be on her doubles team than play against her.

She's a dedicated parishioner, and she is fun and hardworking.

[MARY LOU CHAPMAN] I brought my fancy putter.

[ROBIN SHOURIE] I do not see her age.

She doesn't even look her age, to start off with.

And I'm not saying this facetiously, but she doesn't act her age.

You know, she's sporty and always willing to have fun... [MARY LOU CHAPMAN] There we go... [DAVID] This is a great picture... We finally got to meet Mary Lou at her home in the hills of Berkeley, California.

[MARY LOU CHAPMAN] I have a beautiful view of the Bay Area, I can see San Francisco.

I can see the Bay Bridge.

[NOTES PLAYED ON PIANO] I was in World War II as a Red Cross donut dolly.

We served donuts and coffee to the troops.

[DAVID] Her memories are very clear, very warm, especially when she reflected on the women she worked with in the clubmobile.

- That group was a really, really nice group to be with.

Edna was a southern gal.

Dottie Bargelt, she was a blonde from California.

And then there was Elizabeth Black who was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, tall, slim, pretty girl, who was an artist.

She was very lady-like, and sweet and nice, and certainly somebody that you respected.

We had a lot of work to do.

You know, making donuts and serving and also, we had to be hostesses, friendly with the fellows and talk with them, that's what the fellows wanted.

They were fun, you know.

If you ask 'em if they wanted cream and sugar, they'd say, oh, just put your finger in it.

That was a big joke.

You know, we're very conscious that there was a war on.

We don't know where we're going; we don't know what we're doing next.

Really, a live for the moment.

- At one point, she brought out her dog tags, but these were not the original dog tags, these were replacements.

And she had a story why.

[MARY LOU CHAPMAN] And one day, this one fellow who came there a lot, could he take my dog tags with him on his airplane mission over Germany.

You were not supposed to ever take your dog tags off, once you were issued them.

But he kept insisting and insisting, and I finally said okay.

Well, he didn't come back.

[DAVID] And then, two years later , as the war is ending, the Red Cross sent Mary Lou's clubmobiles unit to help with American soldiers being released from a German POW camp.

- Who should come up to the clubmobiles but the fellow who had taken my dog tags, and I couldn't believe that he was there.

And I said, where are my dog tags?

And he said, at the bottom of the North Sea.

[PERKY 40S MUSIC] One of the fellows on the air base made pins for us, with our nicknames on them.

He made them out of airplane brass wire and this, I have kept, this is Lulu and it's on my lapel.

I don't even know the fellow who made it, but I've always treasured it.

[MUSIC ENDS] [DAVID] After the war, Mary Lou married a Red Cross doctor and settled in Berkeley, California.

She continued working for the Red Cross, and still volunteers for them today.

And we did put her in touch with John Black, Elizabeth's son.

[MARY] The fascinating thing is, I learned from Elizabeth's son that they had lived in, in Berkeley while I was living here.

But there was no way in the world that she would know that I was in Berkeley.

It's too bad.

It would have been fun if we had resumed our friendship.

- But now she has the portrait that Elizabeth sketched during the war.

Through the years, her original got lost, but we were happy to bring her this really nice copy.

- I'm happy that I have it.

I think it reminds me also of the era... We had a certain kind of, uh, responsibility I think in our lives... that we kind of comes through in the faces... we looked determined.

[CHUCKLES] - There's been so much goodwill surrounding this project... [KATHY] It's a very small, but it's a very giving community with the researchers.

I like being able to give back.

[DAVID] Connecting with these families all over the country.

Elizabeth probably never imagined that what she did back then would still be touching so many lives today.

[MARY LOU CHAPMAN] What Elizabeth did was a grand contribution.

- What she did for the soldiers, and their families, nothing short of amazing.

- It was just wonderful to have someone who was doing something that you knew would be a joy to your family.

[LOIS] I think what she did was beautiful.

And it's a shame all these years that it went unnoted.

[BOB] If you can do a good deed that's recognized 70 years later, that's about as good as it gets.

- I wish I could meet her.

- Mm-hmm.

- Me too.

- I wish I could just say, you know, you brought our dad back to us again.

[CLOSING MUSICAL THEME] [NARRATOR] You can see the gallery of American soldiers, sailors and airmen at wqed.org/elizabethblack.